Pieces
by gveret
Summary: Elsa falls in love with ice three times, and it breaks her heart twice.


The first time Elsa falls in love with ice she is almost four, and Anna is still red and puffy and fragile all the time. Elsa isn't allowed to lift or tickle her, and Anna is such a ridiculous, grumpy baby, and Elsa just wants to see her smile.

She makes silly faces and sillier noises and wears even _sillier_ hats than that, ones that belong to her mother the queen and are therefore the very height of Arendelle fashion (and Arendelle fashion is at the top of Elsa's list of things to get rid of once she's queen); but Anna just frowns her serious baby frowns and blinks her enormous baby eyes and at absolute most maybe sneezes.

Her father tells her Anna is just teething and not to take it personally, but he is an adult and has no idea what he's talking about. As an older sister, Elsa knows it is her responsibility to get Anna to smile.

Elsa is half-asleep one day when she thinks about pompous tutors and accidentally makes the condensation on the windowpane slip and reshape itself and start scampering around. She's shaken fully awake by the sound of loud, high-pitched laughter and stares in wonder at her little sister staring in wonder at Elsa's dancing little ice gentlemen.

It's the first time Elsa makes Anna laugh, and she falls in love with more than one thing that day.

.

The first time ice breaks her heart, Elsa is very happy and then immediately very scared. Anna and she are playing, together, just as they should be doing, because they are kids and because they are sisters and because they are friends. And Elsa is happy, just as she should be, because she loves her sister and she loves her ice and she loves loving them.

And maybe she was also already scared through the happy, a thin, burrowing tendril of scared running inside her, blunted by Anna's beautiful laughter but sharpened by her speed. But then Anna simply _falls_ and Elsa simply doesn't _catch_ her and the fear is all there is, except for maybe a new, terrible tendril of _guilt_ that is going to become so familiar, even if she doesn't know it yet.

Because all Elsa knows then (besides _I'm scared_) is that Anna is small and still, still like Anna never is and smaller than she ever should be, and Anna has something strange in her hair and Anna is _hurt_ and Elsa has _dropped_ her _sister_ she _let_ her sister _fall_.

She doesn't think she can ever love her ice again, and probably it isn't the only thing she is no longer capable of loving.

.

The second time Elsa falls in love with ice she is running away, but also running towards. She becomes herself very quickly and very powerfully, and she becomes herself in frost, or maybe around it or maybe through it, tearing as she goes; she doesn't care. The ice is there, as it has always been, in her breath and out of it, but it makes sense this time. This time it doesn't hurt.

She makes things she wants and things she didn't know she wanted; she makes transparent, musical fruit on bushes that were barren and boring; she makes steps under her feet so she can walk into the sky; she makes the wind visible in a way that has got to make her happier, because the wind is so, so beautiful.

She makes a castle without even noticing, but she supposes that was unavoidable. She makes it full of walls but with only one door, and she doesn't care to analyze it. She is a little amazed at herself but mostly so severely relieved she feels like she's nothing but one enormous, terminal sigh in the wake of which nothing can remain standing.

She doesn't think she really wants to stand anymore, anyway.

.

The second time ice breaks her heart, Anna is there again, of course. Of course. Elsa just can never stop hurting her with herself.

She should never have fallen in love. Not that first time, and definitely not again, when she already should've known better. But she thought the distance, all this blissful, aching distance would be fine, would be enough – and then of course it isn't. It isn't, and she knows, she remembers, how fatal she can be from a _distance_.

Maybe the truth is that she didn't think it would be enough at all. Maybe the truth is that she knew, and she didn't care.

Anna tells her what she should've known, if only she'd bothered to look, if only she'd bothered to care. Anna tells her that, as always, her ice is impervious and inescapable, and she tells her that, for once, her ice is _out_ and in all the places she's never even been.

In response, Elsa breaks, just as she always does. She breaks people and things and herself and her sister and maybe everything, everything but what needs to be broken to make things right.

.

The third time Elsa falls in love with ice she is Queen again, genuinely this time. She is also the opposite of desperate, a thing she hadn't been in a very long time, and so it isn't dramatic and it takes her a bit of a while to notice.

At first it's a thing of acceptance and stillness. She makes a rink and she dances and she pulls Anna along, and no one is screaming in terror and no one is silent in it, either.

After that it's a thing of assurance and solidity, as befits a ruler. She remakes her crown and scepter in a more honest shape, but more importantly she finds all the others who are like her in this way and she makes sure there are spaces for them in Arendelle and she shapes new ones where there aren't.

Then it's a thing of rediscovery and joy, and it's slightly embarrassing but mostly just incredible. When there isn't Kristoff and there aren't council meetings there are Anna and Elsa, and they race down frozen hallways in their socks, and they add fluffy white beards to the least beard-friendly paintings, and they make popsicles in some fairly ridiculous flavors and cautiously lick them in front of the fireplace.

It's still always a slow thing, soft and hushed and burning; like it was always inside her; like it's stopped trying to leach out.

She falls in love with ice and she falls in love with Anna and she falls in love with _herself_, finally, finally; and she doesn't think she will ever stop falling.

.

Ice doesn't break her heart that time.


End file.
